Protecting the 4th Street Underpass

The East Village neighborhood in Calgary was one of the hardest hit in the flood, and the 4th Street Underpass, which connects downtown to the Beltline and Stampede areas, certainly wasn’t spared. The pump station designed to remove water from the area in normal times of rainfall could not keep up with the amount of water that burst through in the floods, and it wasn’t designed to do so, explains Stantec’s Dennis Darling. The electrical and pumping equipment became completely submerged and our team that examined the site after the water subsided found that almost nothing was salvageable.

We quickly created a report that outlined what needed to be done to get the newly designed underpass back to normal – one of the main strides in returning the downtown core to its former glory. Dennis Darling explains that the best bet was to essentially build the same pump design, only situated on higher ground so that in the event of another flood it could avoid its previous fate. A Stantec team is currently in the process of breaking ground for the above-grade structure. If the rivers should ever reach those heights again, at least the 4th Street Underpass will be better prepared to bounce back.